BASEBALL; Take Me Out to the Baggage Check

By JOHN BRANCH

Published: May 25, 2007

Zeljko Bibic was headed into Yankee Stadium on Wednesday with a Tumi bag slung over his shoulder and his son, Nikola, at his side. Not so fast, he was told at the gate. The bag was too large to be permitted inside.

A security officer cheerfully told Bibic exactly where he could stash his bag during the game. So began one of hundreds of similar marches across the street, to a place where oversized bags are always welcome.

On the sidewalk outside Ball Park Lanes on River Avenue, across from Gate 6 and the portal to the bleacher seats, Ivery Black held a sign above the commercial chaos. ''Bag check in the bowling alley,'' it read.

Ball Park Lanes has become the primary storage closet for Yankees fans carrying more than weighty expectations. As the first pitch approached Wednesday night, a steady stream of bag-toting ticket holders curled inside the door. They handed their bags and $5 to an alley employee named Michael Collazo. He gave each person a numbered claim ticket in return.

Collazo placed the bags, in order, on four wooden shelves lining a U-shaped alcove. When the shelves filled, bags were placed on the floor. And when the floor was covered, and Collazo had distributed nearly 400 tickets, employees opened a storage closet and filled it with about 100 more bags, and then started stashing some behind the front counter, near the bowling shoes.

The rules about what could be brought into ballparks and arenas, including Yankee Stadium, changed after 9/11. If visitors in the Bronx read the security notice on the Yankees' Web site, or manage to hear the recorded announcements looping through the stadium's tinny speakers -- like those above Gate 6, clogged with bird nests -- they would learn that backpacks, briefcases and most other totes larger than a purse are not permitted.

Hundreds at every game do not know this. They arrive with bags -- backpacks, mostly -- stuffed with jackets and hats, snacks and cameras. Confronted with security officers and few options, they form a clumsy, circular parade -- from the subway station or a parking lot to the stadium gate, across the street to the bowling alley, back to the stadium for the game, back across the street to fetch their belongings, and home again.

Soon after the terrorist attacks, Ball Park Lanes allowed some regulars to keep their bags in the back closet. Manager Sam Martinez soon saw profit potential. The alley began charging $3 a bag, and later bumped the fee to $5.

During baseball games, bowling takes a backseat to beer and bags. Most of the 50 lanes are dark, but several temporary beer stations sell $5 domestics. The alley and the bar attached to it gradually fill, until revelers are elbow-to-elbow, and movement through the crowd requires an awkward, suck-in-the-belly sideways shuffle.

John Gianos, the alley's co-owner, figures that if someone is coming to check a bag, they might stick around for a beer. They might try a $4 burger at the grill. They might even think bowling is a good idea.

''It is like the A & P,'' he said, making an apples-to-oranges comparison between the bag check and, well, oranges. ''They're losing money on the oranges, but they're making money on something else. Oranges bring the people.''

But it is difficult to see the bag-check side of the business as a loss-leader. Simple math shows that the bowling alley collected roughly $2,500 on Wednesday. Gianos said it might have been his busiest night ever.

Such success has spawned imitators. One business -- Stan's Sports World, on the next block of River Avenue -- had a table set up on the sidewalk Wednesday, below a banner that read, ''Leave your bags in good hands at Stan's.''

A manager at Stan's declined to discuss the bag-check system. Two young workers behind the table charged $7 a bag, and by the bottom of the second inning had handed out 77 laminated claim tickets.

At Ball Park Lanes, weeknights tend to be busier than weekends because more people are coming directly from work or a day's worth of errands. When the first pitch was thrown Wednesday, a line of 30 was filled largely with men in business attire, holding laptop computer bags and wearing a look of impatience.

An hour or two before the game, most of those checking bags were Red Sox fans or tourists wanting to see Yankee Stadium -- people unfamiliar with the stadium's security rules.

Bibic was one of them. Like others leaving a bag that they did not plan to leave, he paused to consider what he truly wanted to carry to the game.

''Rail tickets, so I can get home,'' he said, holding a claim ticket. ''The rest is just dirty laundry and replaceables.''

About 10 such bags remain unclaimed from last year, and one from this season.

By 10:50, 42 minutes after the Yankees completed an 8-3 victory, all but four bags had been retrieved. They were moved behind the front desk. The bar was crowded again.

One of those retrieving a bag -- two, actually -- was Ethan Posner. At 6:45, he had walked down River Avenue in a pinstripe suit, tugging a rolling suitcase and a computer bag. He ducked into the bowling alley and emerged into the daylight a few minutes later, sans suitcase, bag and suit coat.

A native New Yorker living in Washington, Posner had come straight from the airport. With no time to check into his hotel, he went to Ball Park Lanes, where he has checked bags a dozen times before.

''How am I going to go to the game?'' he asked rhetorically, sounding like someone in a bag-check commercial. ''The bag check at the bowling alley.''

Posner would like to think it is still a well-kept secret. He returned at 10:27, finding a mob of fellow retrievers. Minutes later, he rolled his suitcase through the crowd, out the door and into the dark night.

Photo: Ivery Black letting Yankees fans know about the storage space at Ball Park Lanes, which is just across the street from Yankee Stadium. (Photo by G. Paul Burnett/The New York Times)